FlyerTalk Forums - [Survey]: From 2014-15 Did your MP Status Increase, Decrease, or remain the same?

(1) Was 1K, Still 1K

(4) We fly a lot, and despite reducing our United flying significantly, we still fly them enough to re-qualify for 1K

I've been asked to edit this to elaborate on my answers, so while it may be long winded, it will give a much more detailed account of my flying. This is MY account. It may or may not match the experiences of others.

My Flying History
From 2000-2008 I was living in Houston, I was primarily a Continental airlines flyer from 2000 until the merger. I was top tier with them for that entire time. I travel roughly 250 days per year, and while each year sees repeating destinations, I generally am going to a different place most days of the year. As top tier for Continental was Platinum, I qualified for that each year despite flying a lot more than the 75k per year required. After the merger, I became 1K, and have remained 1K since. From 2000 to about a year and half after the merger, I would say that I was upgraded 90%+ of the time. My flying habits were mainly IAH-Somewhere, and Somewhere else back to IAH

In 2008 - I decided not to have a home, and spent 5 years being homeless and just living in hotels rather than spending rent and mortgages for places I would rarely see. Despite this, my upgrade rate remained at 90%+ around the system. Truthfully I didn’t spend a lot of time on the EWR-SFO/LAX routes, so maybe that’s what kept the rate so high.

Since 2012, I have lived in NYC.

While my upgrade success rate was neither promised or guaranteed, it was pretty much a consistent thing for 12 of the last 14 years, and certainly was the basis for the loyalty that I gave them.

I loved Continental, they were great to me, the staff during the my time with them were definitely above average from my experiences around the industry. They had obviously come from a rough time pre-Gordon, and were riding the wave of their new found success. I think the employees were genuinely relieved and proud to be part of a successful and acclaimed company. They were definitely Houston’s airline and the city was proud of them.

What I want from Status
1. Domestic Upgrades
2. Mileage Redemption

Things That make me Unhappy
1. My domestic upgrade rate has dropped from 90% to around 10% for the last 2 years
2. Seeing status-less friends that I am traveling with get offered super cheap upgrades while I remain in coach. My most recent experience was watching the PS flight from JFK-SFO last week be at 12 seats avail at -2hrs, a lot of people on the upgrade list, and NOT ONE person was upgraded. I know that at least the top 10 people on the list were 1K, and again, NOT ONE person was upgraded. Every single one of the 12 seats went to a cheap buy-up at airport checkin. That is just disrespectful to your customers. While I recognize that CPU/ RPU/GPU are not a guaranteed entity, but if you will try to sell the upgrade for more or less nothing to avoid it going to your elite travelers for free, then they should really remove it as an advertised perk. 30 x 1K on list, and someone with no loyalty gets offered a $59 upgrade, they decline it, so the computer says “Oh, how about $39 ?, $29 ?, $19 ? until the seats are taken. Pretty tough to stomach that.

3. Consistently finding that the only aircraft options for me out of EWR are EMB-145’s and Props (Many for 3hr hops) when the competition has better
4. The deterioration of the operations. On-time is terrible, staff attitudes are generally poor, and the quality of the product has been poor.
5. On-time has become so bad that that I can no longer book United when I absolutely need to get somewhere.
6. I won’t book less than a 2hr connection whereas I certainly used to be comfortable with this.
7. I will not book any flight on an EMB145, CRJ200, or the props
8. United seems to have decided that they are only going to care about GS Members. Rather than GS members getting treated best, then 1K maybe 10% worse, Platinum 10% worse than 1K etc, it seems to be GS gets everything and 1K or less gets nothing. Despite opinion on here, I KNOW that UA comps a hell of a lot of GS status, and I do question their decision to put all their eggs in one basket for a group of people that will have little reason to be loyal in the future without GS status.
9. GS boarding the aircraft before Paid First Class just feels wrong to most people I know.
10. I think they have a very short-sighted view of their business. They certainly seem driven to get $10 from anyone today even if it means losing $1000’s later.

Things that Don't
1. I still find that with a little flexibility, I manage to easily use my RPU/GPU’s
2. I still find redeeming awards to be ok
3. While there is a lot of hoopla about food, I really don’t care too much about that. I will say that there is a noticeable HUGE gulf between the quality of food, and the presentation of the food that Delta serves over what United serves.
4. I know that lots of people get all up about IFE. It’s another thing that I just don’t care about. Left to my own devices, I’d listen to Channel 9, my own music or sleep.

Why I’ll Re-qualify for 1K ?
The volume of travel that we do means that really unless I literally refuse to fly United at all, there will be times where they are the best option. They are great for long-haul flights out of New York. I find the 2-2-2 BF cabin (which I chose to find myself on instead of the 2-4-2 cabin) is just fine. I’m usually traveling with others and usually take the 2 middle seats (D, E) so I essentially have all aisle access anyways. I’ll do 5 or 6 long haul adventures in 2015 and that will easily get me past the 1K requirement. I will also do probably 10-15 PS Flights along with a handful of others

What Business Has United Lost From Me
As above, I will no longer book a flight on United that finds me on EMB145, CRJ200, or the props. Coming out of NYC, and really having all three airports being more or less an equal option, Delta consistently offers me a better choice of aircraft than United. I travel with, and book the travel for 10 other people. Whereas in the past United would get all of our flying unless they really didn’t have an option, they lose out on all of the above. We are not a huge corporation, but on Feb 13th (today), United has lost about $45k year to date from me.

What would make me come back ?
1. No 50 seaters with no F Cabin (or less) on ops longer than 60 min
2. Significant improvement in on-time %
3. Significant improvement on the companies attitude towards their customers. This is from top to bottom.
4. Significant increase in upgrade %
5. Significant Reduction in the offers of TOD Upgrades. It is their right to sell whatever they want for as little as possible, but they won’t keep me as a loyal customer while doing so. I liked the DL/AA way of not doing the TOD until all the elites are accommodated first. This oddly enough seems to have changed at DL as I bought a really cheap TOD round trip upgrade this week (a month in advance of the actual travel).
6. CONSISTENT improvement. There is ZERO consistency in product or attitudes. I rarely get a flight where everything was good. This wouldn’t matter to me if I didn’t fly so much on their competition, so I see how bad it actually is by comparison. My experiences on Delta are CONSISTENT, and just much, much smoother on average.

A Tale of Today.
This morning I flew from EWR-MCO. In the past, almost everything in and out of FL was an easy upgrade. As with my experiences of the last few years, I did not get the upgrade despite it being a high fare. I checked in at EWR in the non elite area as the Premier Checkin was not staffed. The TSA Pre-Check line was not open (Not UA fault, but still less than fun). The aircraft was fine, the crew (Except for one) were great, friendly etc. But the one, was TERRIBLE. She sat in the jumpseat right in front of me playing on her iPhone from push until take off, generally looking annoyed.

She then disappeared to work in the back of the cabin. The crew that served me were great. As we started to descend, she returned to the jump seat, and proceeded to play on her phone some more. The kicker was that at about 4,000 feet, without asking me, she got up, reached over me (while I was looking out the window) and closed my shade. She rolled her eyes and said something along the lines of I don’t like the light in my eyes. As soon as she sat down again, i re-opened the shade to which she again rolled her eyes and scowled. Aside from liking to look out the window, I do like to be adjusted to the light outside at takeoff and landing. She basically tried to insist that I close it.

After landing, I walked to baggage claim (MCO has an A and a B) There was not one sign from the aircraft to baggage claim that said whether United was at A or B. The monitors in the airport didn’t show it either. Even the pilots went down the wrong side and walked back up to the other side with me. We had a laugh about it. Bags took forever to come out, and elite bags didn’t come out at the beginning.

Their operation just isn’t run well.